The night had been short and restless. The altitude, jet lag, and the cramped, noisy dormitory had all combined to limit my hours of sleep. After a quick breakfast at 4:30 a.m., we left the refuge, bundled up against the cold, and began the ascent by the light of our headlamps. I followed our guide, choosing a cautious but steady pace. Ahead of us, we could see a string of other lights climbing the mountain. The path was steeper than the day before, and I was alert for any signs of altitude sickness.
Little by little, as the night gave way to dawn, I gained confidence and enjoyed the light that was beginning to spread across the mountains. Yellow and ochre colors appeared, the outlines of the rocks became clearer, and I could hear the murmur of the little stream we were following. The sun rose behind a mountain range as we reached the pass from which we could finally see the summit of Jebel Toubkal, at 4,167 meters, the highest mountain in North Africa. Another half hour of effort and we would be there.
I rediscovered this sense of wonder at being at the heart of the nascent dawn while reading the superb novel “Souviens-toi des Abeilles” (Remember the Bees – not yet available in English) by the young Moroccan author Zineb Mekouar. I came across this book a few days after climbing the Toubkal, in a bookshop in the Kasbah of the Oudayas in Rabat. I devoured it in a few hours.
Anir, a ten-year-old boy, loves to leave his house at dawn to go to Taggart’s apiary, a collective apiary just outside their village in the High Atlas Mountains. Sometimes he accompanies his mother, Aïcha, sometimes he walks there alone, enjoying the silence before the bees and the village wake up.
It was his grandfather Jeddi who introduced him to the life of bees and the rituals of the apiary. He lives with him in this village with its ancestral customs and rules, but whose survival is threatened by drought. Omar, Anir’s father, has left for Agadir, where he transports and empties crates in a convenience store to provide for his family and try to find and pay for a doctor who could cure his wife Aïcha, who has been living as if possessed, between prostration and screams, since a terrible night at the apiary.
Omar would like to take his wife and son to Agadir, but Anir wants to stay in the village, close to his grandfather and the apiary. “Souviens-toi des Abeilles” is a spellbinding novel about the transmission of knowledge, as well as pain across generations. It is also a splendid ode to the beauty of the Atlas Mountains and villages, described with accuracy and emotion.
